Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Ma’s actions forfeit his leadership’s legitimacy

James Wang 王景弘

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) may have been elected in a democratic process, but after his inauguration, he has done all he can to destroy democratic mechanisms, moving the country toward dictatorship and dragging relations with China back to the civil war era as if they were an internal domestic issue between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party. By ignoring the nation’s sovereignty and democracy, he has forfeited legitimacy to rule Taiwan.

With his hired hands in the Referendum Review Committee, Ma has deprived the public of their referendum rights, directly challenging their freedom of speech. By letting his party lead the government, he has destroyed the balance of power by centralizing power in a one-man dictatorship.

US analysts urge Washington to pay attention to ECFA

Taipei Times

While the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) will have modest global economic effects, the geo-economic implications are significant enough to demand strategic attention from the US, two US international economists said in a recent study.

Daniel Rosen and Zhi Wang of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote that the ECFA underscores the importance of securing US economic engagement of the first order in Asia.

Taiwan Voters Peek Behind the KMT Curtain of Corruption in Taichung

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Jason Hu was born in Beijing and grew up in the hierarchical, one-party state culture of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). As a one-party state, it was a culture of privilege, power, and entitlement. Within that culture one could easily rise if one had reasonable talent, kept one eye closed under the party mask of hierarchical respectability, and was loyal to the party regardless of its actions. It was a culture fostered by Chiang Kai-shek (CKS), a warlord among warlords and one who manipulated events so that he seemed the logical choice to bear the mantle of Sun Yat-sen. If one followed the above precepts particularly that of loyalty, one could expect to be taken care of by the benevolence of the KMT. Jason Hu did that and was rewarded by being its representative for Mayor of Taichung.

Taiwan agriculture needs fresh vision

Taiwan News Editorial

In the wake of the signing of the controversial "Cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China, President Ma Ying-jeou and his Kuomintang government have maintained that they refuted the warnings of critics and "held the line" on the defense of Taiwan's agriculture.

This claim has some justice since the new pact's early harvest lists did not grant the PRC any concessions on the 830 agricultural produce categories in which imports from China are banned nor any reductions in tariff protection for 1,415 produce types whose importation from China is already allowed under the terms of our entry into the World Trade Organization in early 2002, secured tariff cuts for 18 types of agricultural and fishery produce from Taiwan.

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